Video: Obama tells Malaysian presser United States “has work to do” on human rights

posted at 5:01 pm on April 27, 2014 by Jazz Shaw

A trip around Asia entails a lot of pressers for the President, and as formulaic and stodgy as they can become you never know when the star of the show will fire off a memorable line. Caleb Howe notes that, while addressing the press in Kuala Lumpur, Major Garrett asked Barack Obama why, in general, he hadn’t used his diplomatic “tool kit” to do more to influence foreign leaders to improve on human rights, and in specific why he hadn’t taken a meeting with opposition leader Anwar Ibrahim, currently in jail for his views and activism. (Or for sodomy, depending who you ask.) His response drew more than a few odd looks.

“I think the Prime Minister is the first to acknowledge that Malaysia’s still got some work to do. Just like the United States, by the way, has some work to do on these issues. Human Rights Watch probably has a list of things they think we should be doing as a government.”

Caleb expresses some surprise, since many assumed that the Apology Tour was over by this point.

This is the first time a sitting President of the United States has made a state visit to Malaysia in almost fifty years. However, the last time the President bad-mouthed the United States in a foreign country is far more recent. From France to Mexico to Afghanistan and Egypt, the President has made a habit of negative assessments of the United States while traveling abroad.

It is especially ironic that a free press was on the list of human rights concerns that President Obama said Malaysia and America need to work on, given the many and increasing reports from White House reporters and the usually sympathetic mainstream press about his administration’s mistreatment and bullying of reporters.

We have some spots where there is probably room for improvement, at least in terms of overcrowding in prisons and citizens being spied on and such, but overall I think most people would agree that the United States has a pretty impressive record on human rights compared to the rest of the planet. In fact, there are areas where some could fairly say that we’re a bit too obsessed with human rights, leading to additional exposure to attacks, both internal and external. But hey… that’s part of the price you pay for living in a mostly free society.

This was an odd choice of words for the President, though. And certainly an odd time and place to break it out.

How about the human rights of Americans to fully participate in the political process which Obama had the IRS take away from many of them?

How about the human rights of many hundreds of innocent Mexican men, women and children to not be murder by weapons Obama furnished to the drug gangs that murdered them?

How about the human rights of those Americans at Benghazi to not be put in harms way and then be abandoned by their own government.

How about the human rights of millions of people, including some with cancer, and many with children, who had their health insurgence taken away from them by Obama?

How about the human right of a small fry rancher who hasn’t paid some portion of fees to the almighty BLM to not have 200 plus [far more than the 130 sent to Poland by Obama to supposedly protect the Poles from the Russians] very much armed men army, including snipers, descend on him and his families like he was some kind of dangerous terrorist threatening to blow up the world?

That’s what it is. This thing or jackass or whatever that’s in the White House has got to go. Impeach the bastard, convict him, and deport him bsck to where he came from along with all the other illegals.

If I could send President obama back in time to Stalin’s russia, Warsaw pack member nation, or even today to Venezula, Cuba, etc.. I would, maybe then, and I mean MAYBE then he will understand how lucky he is to be in America.

The ONLY human rights problem we have in the USA are the Dem-progs and their idiot president. Frickin’ unicorn prince. Bend over and squeal – renalin is correct. Bathhouse Barry will leave no insult of America alone on foreign soil until Wooky is once again proud to call herself an “American”.

Gad I don’t believe these pathetic … lefties. I’ll be nice.

I wonder why he didn’t bring up the Clippers while in Malaysia. Or the Core Curriculum. I hear the Malaysians are hot on all that stuff.

Y’know, if I were one of the pioneers in the ‘fields’ of civil rights, or even the clean environment movement, I’d be REALLY po’d that all of the REAL progress made by ‘us’ is NEVER, ever recognized, anymore !!!
Jeez’o’pete !!!
Bugs me a lot.

When he says crap like this he cedes the moral high ground and puts the US on the same plane as everyone else. So the next time a US president criticizes some horrible human rights record of a foreign regime the response will be to be quiet and clean up your own mess that Obama says you have.

Can’t this president for once not bad mouth his own country when he’s abroad. If he hates this country so much why did he run for president? The 1000 days he have left for his presidency can’t come quick enough!

Mr. Obama, please tell me, if millions of Mexicans have a human right to invade America why don’t millions of Russians have a human right to invade Ukraine, and France and Germany for that matter, and to invade Imperial DC City too?

I’m ashamed that he is my President..I’m ashamed millions of Americans voted for him again…voted for him in the first place..He truly hates this country and what it stands for…He may of been born here, may being the key word, but he’s no American to me

This is disgusting. We all know the US is perfect because it was created in God’s image and preordained when Jesus wrote the Bible.

Simmer down. All he did was say we still had issues, which is undeniably true.

Lots of extreme emotional regurgitation here of late.

antisense on April 27, 2014 at 5:51 PM

You do realize he’s in charge of the country he’s complaining about… right? He’s the one who continued to spy on other nations. HE’S the one who thinks and continues to think that our private email conversations should be captured, recorded and scanned… without a warrant. HE’S the one who ran a fake gun running campaign that got people killed so he could build up political capital to get gun laws passed.

And yet HE will tell the world that he will not enforce laws or reinterpret laws at his own whim for whatever political purpose du juor he feels like doing that day.

And here he is saying that the United States of America still has human rights issues that THEY (not “we”, THEY) have work on.

I fully expect Obama to go to the UN after serving as president. It will become his alternate power base and if the Clintons found Jimmy Carter tiresome when they were president before, they are really going to hate Obama.

A nation can survive its fools, and even the ambitious. But it cannot survive treason from within. An enemy at the gates is less formidable, for he is known and carries his banner openly.

But the traitor moves amongst those within the gate freely, his sly whispers rustling through all the alleys, heard in the very halls of government itself. For the traitor appears not a traitor; he speaks in accents familiar to his victims, and he wears their face and their arguments, he appeals to the baseness that lies deep in the hearts of all men. He rots the soul of a nation, he works secretly and unknown in the night to undermine the pillars of the city, he infects the body politic so that it can no longer resist.

This is disgusting. We all know the US is perfect because it was created in God’s image and preordained when Jesus wrote the Bible.

Simmer down. All he did was say we still had issues, which is undeniably true.

Lots of extreme emotional regurgitation here of late.

antisense on April 27, 2014 at 5:51 PM

Stuff your strawman, tool. Nobody was arguing that the U.S. is perfect. But its human rights record is a lot better than Malaysia’s, or Kenya’s, or Indonesia’s, and it would be nice if the fool who calls himself the President of the United States would occasionally acknowledge that fact, instead of never missing an opportunity to disparage the country that has done so much for the lousy ingrate and his mooching illegal alien relatives.

Typical for our America hating Marxist president. Never mind that for all practical purpose Malaysia is a one party state, where opposition candidates arejl jailed on trumped up charges. Another popular method the ruling party uses is civil.law that makes it very easy to sue opposition party members for slander and bankrupting them with huge civil judgements by a very political partisan judicial system. I guess Malaysia is indeed Obama’s camelot.

A president who runs guns to drug cartels, spies on his own citizens, uses armed bureaucracies to terrorize same, dreams of “de-developing” the world, wants our allies destroyed, states that his phone and pen trump laws and the Constitution, and uses drones to kill people worldwide without giving much of a damn whether they’re even the right people…

…thinks our “human rights problem” is that we don’t want illegal immigrants voting for his party in elections.

Thanks Obama for once again getting on foreign soil and blunderbutting about human rights. By the way, did you mention how you have trashed the greatest healthcare system in the world by taking away our rights to choose a doctor, a hospital, and affordable healthcare? Did you mention that you have taken away our individual privacy rights through the NRA? Did you mention that you have taken away the rights of our children and grandchildren to live in a debt free society by drowning their futures with taxation and an unsustainable debt? Did you mention that under your control, the department of justice and the IRS have been so corrupted that human rights are totally causing fear and suspicion to a majority of human Americans? There you go Obama. Maybe the US does have a human rights problem.

A phucking moron of the grandest scale. Luckily, everyone has tuned him out as we monitor the countdown clock. Even fat thighs bangs in her face, and his two supposed spawns have tuned out at this point.

Even when Barack Hussain Obama leaves the presidency, I do think that we will be forced to hear crap from this guy for many years. He won’t be satisfied with community organizer; he will be the self-appointed worldwide organizer. It is a sickening thought. Organizer means troublemaker.

This was an odd choice of words for the President, though. And certainly an odd time and place to break it out.

I find it very odd that Jazz Shaw finds Obama’s choice of words/time/place to be odd. It’s actually completely in character for Obama. The statement may be impolitic, unwise, and too revealing of Obama’s beliefs, but Obama remains safe in the knowledge that the statement will quickly disappear from ABC, NBC, CBS, CNN, and most of the media.

•Use language that indicates that you think the United States is an exceptional place.
•Tell people that, even with flaws, the US is still a great place to live.
•Learn proper flag and anthem etiquette, and practice.
•Check your pronunciations of place names with a local.
•Have your speeches proofed by someone who knows and loves our history.
•Figure out how to order a drink, and a sandwich, in a workingman’s bar.

“I think the Prime Minister is the first to acknowledge that Malaysia’s still got some work to do. Just like the United States, by the way, has some work to do on these issues. Human Rights Watch probably has a list of things they think we should be doing as a government.”

For once this guy is right. The administration has failed to protect voting rights for miliatry personnel serving overseas. They have failed to protect first amendment rights for christian organizations and individuals. They have failed to prevent undue government prosecution of the political opposition. I think the first step is for the current occupant of the white house to resign immediately.

Face it, we have a President who views America the way a foreigner would. Not to mention the way he likes to pretend that he’s a downtrodden community agitator instead of the leader of the free world.
Disgusting.